Rebels leave NCP’s family split
MUMBAI: Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader Ajit Pawar’s decision to break away from his party represents a tipping point in his relationship with party patriarch Sharad Pawar, with whom he has had growing differences in recent years.
According to analysts and party insiders, Ajit’s decision to back the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) at a time when Sharad, his uncle, was attempting to stitch together a coalition with the Shiv Sena and the Congress may have been surprising but not entirely unexpected.
A cold war of sorts had been underway for a few years now, mostly over Sharad’s support to his daughter Supriya Sule and grandson Rohit Pawar (son of another nephew).
But the most significant escalation came shortly before the state elections when central authorities booked the two Pawars over alleged irregularities in the Maharashtra State Cooperative bank.
MUMBAI: Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader Ajit Pawar’s decision to break away from his party represents a tipping point in his relationship with party patriarch Sharad Pawar, with whom he has had growing differences in recent years.
According to analysts and party insiders, Ajit’s decision to back the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) at a time when Sharad, his uncle, was attempting to stitch together a coalition with the Shiv Sena and the Congress may have been surprising but not entirely unexpected.
A cold war of sorts had been underway for a few years now, mostly over Sharad’s support to his daughter Supriya Sule and grandson Rohit Pawar (son of another nephew). But the most significant escalation came shortly before the state elections when central authorities booked the two Pawars over alleged irregularities in the Maharashtra State Cooperative bank.
This is when Ajit suddenly resigned as MLA and went incommunicado. He was angry that senior party leaders were vociferous in defending Sharad Pawar but nobody supported him, said one party leader, asking not to be named.
While Ajit has not spoken about defying his uncle, he defended his decision shortly after being sworn-in as BJP leader Devendra Fadnavis’s deputy chief minister. “From the day the (poll) results were declared on October 24, no party was able to form the government. Maharashtra was facing many problems, including farmers’ issues. So we decided to form a stable government,” he said.
Shortly after, Sharad Pawar called Ajit’s decision “an act of indiscipline”. “No NCP worker is in favour of the NCP-BJP government. NCP MLAs who support the BJP should know this move attracts provisions of antidefection law,” he said.
Within hours, Sule dropped hints that the split was not restricted to the party but was also of the family. “Party and Family split,” she said in a status update on WhatsApp on Saturday morning. The status update is visible to those who are part of her contacts. In a second update, she wrote: “Who do you trust in life... never felt so cheated in my life. Defended him loved him... look what I get in return”. In both messages, she did not mention who she was referring to.
Several NCP leaders also believe that the simmering tensions may not have been the only factor. “One cannot deny the possibility that the BJP may have blackmailed him by using the corruption cases against him as leverage,” said a former NCP minister, who asked not to be named.
The claim was also made by Shiv Sena leader Sanjay Raut. “We have information of how Ajit Pawar has been blackmailed and will expose this soon,” Raut told reporters on Saturday.
Political analyst Prakash Bal said time will tell whether Ajit struck a deal with BJP voluntarily or was arm-twisted. “It was a general perception that he will not break the party but one doesn’t know what deal he has struck with the BJP. We also don’t know whether he was threatened with probe by Enforcement Directorate, etc. Pawar family is very closely knit and no one would have expected that Ajit will break away from the clan,” he said.